Plato: Teleology

In this paper I examine the role of optimality reasoning in Aristotle’s natural science. By “optimality reasoning” I mean reasoning that appeals to some conception of “what is best” in order to explain why things are the way they are. We are first introduced to this pattern of reasoning in the famous passage at Phaedo 97b8-98a2, where (Plato’s) Socrates invokes “what is best” as a cause (aitia) of things in nature. This passage can be seen as the intellectual ancestor of (...) Aristotle’s own principle, expressed by the famous dictum “nature does nothing in vain but always what is best for the substance from among the possibilities concerning each kind of animal” (Progression of Animals II, 704b12-18). The paper is focused around exploring three questions that arise in connection with Aristotle’s use of this optimality principle: (1) How do we understand the concept of “the best” at work in the principle? (2) How does Aristotle conceive of “the range of possibilities”? And, finally, (3) what role does optimality reasoning play in Aristotle’s natural science? Is it a special form of demonstration in which the optimality principle functions as one of its premises, or is it a heuristic device that helps uncover those causally relevant features of a natural substances that ultimately serve as middle terms in demonstrations? In the final section I return to the comparison between Plato and Aristotle and argue that, while both see the natural world as the product of an optimizing agent and while both see this assumption as licensing a pattern of reasoning that appeals to a certain conception of “the best”, they disagree fundamentally over what the optimization agent is and how it operates. Thus, despite their general agreement, it would be a mistake to think that Aristotle simply took over Plato’s use of optimality reasoning without significant modifications. (shrink)

This article concerns the so-called irrigation system in the Timaeus’ biology (77a-81e), which replenishes our body’s tissues with resources from food delivered as blood. I argue that this system functions mainly by the natural like-to-like motion of the elements and that the circulation of blood is an important case study of Plato’s physics. We are forced to revise the view that the elements attract their like. Instead, similar elements merely tend to coalesce with each other in virtue of their tactile (...) features as the atomists describe. The notion of attraction is replaced with this notion of mere coalescence. I begin by outlining how blood is made from food. I then argue that an understanding of health and disease compels us to read Plato as if he were an atomist and to abandon the popular scholarly interpretations according to which the elements attract each other. (shrink)

I develop an account of the role that biology plays in the Timaeus’ view of nous and other aspects of cognitive life. I begin by outlining the biology of human cognition. I then argue that these biological views shine an important light on different aspects of the soul. I then argue that the human body is particularly friendly to nous, paying special attention to the heart and the liver. I next consider the ways that the body fails to protect our (...) nous. I conclude by comparing human nous with the cognition of non-humans. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between justice and nature in key figures in early Greek philosophy in order to understand the idea of nature that grounds Plato’s account of justice. Tracing the idea of justice through Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, I show that each figure uses justice in unique and innovative ways to explain different concepts of nature. Among the Presocratics then, justice is a heuristic for grasping the newly emerging and evolving concept of nature. It is in turn this (...) evolving concept of nature that ushers in the transformation of justice from the conventional Hesiodic notion of “legal settlement” or “paying one’s debts” to Plato’s philosophical account of justice based on nature. The transformation is marked by the development of several key epistemological criteria and teleological facets in the earliest concepts of nature. As such, Plato’s account of justice in the Republic is deeply indebted to Presocratic conceptions of justice and nature. (shrink)

The intellectual history of evolutionary theory really does not begin in earnest until the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. Prior to that, the idea that species might have evolved over time was not a serious possibility for most naturalists and philosophers. There is certainly no substantive debate in antiquity about evolution in the modern sense. There were really only two competing explanations for how living things came to have the parts they do: design or blind chance. Ancient Greek Atomism, for example, (...) taught that all composite bodies, including living things, are generated through the random collision of atoms as they rebel and move in the void. Plato and Aristotle both dismissed this possibility on the grounds that living things are too complex and too well-adapted to be products of chance. This eventually became the central premise in Galen’s own Argument from Design. That species forms might have gradually evolved over time by a process of natural selection was not seen as a plausible alternative. Of course, such a theory had been proposed by Empedocles in the fifth century BCE. But because his theory still relied heavily on chance, it was not taken seriously by any of the later ancient Greek or Roman thinkers. My aim in this paper is to investigate the reasons why evolutionary thinking failed to gain momentum in antiquity after its introduction by Empedocles. (shrink)

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that in the ideal city women and men in the guardian class should receive the same education (451e–52a, 456d–57a) and do the same work (453b–56b); indeed, Socrates emphasizes that the highest office in the ideal city, of philosopher-rulers, will include philosopher-queens and not just philosopher-kings (540c). Socrates’ conclusions might be thought to recognize equality as a value, but in this chapter, we argue that the basis for assigning men and women the same work is a (...) judgment of sameness in nature: with respect to civic contribution, women’s nature is the same as men’s, although on the whole inferior. Fundamentally, the judgment that women and men ought to do the same work irrespective of sex is a method of collecting and dividing kinds according to nature, so that the “ought” is scientific rather than moral. (shrink)

I argue that Plato thinks that a sunaition is a mere tool used by a soul (or by the cosmic nous) to promote an intended outcome. In the first section, I develop the connection between sunaitia and Plato’s teleology. In the second section, I argue that sunaitia belong to Plato’s theory of the soul as a self-mover: specifically, they are those things that are set in motion by the soul in the service of some goal. I also argue against several (...) popular and long-standing interpretations, namely, that sunaitia correspond to Aristotle’s idea of hypothetical necessity, that sunaitia are the ‘how’ in an explanation (whereas the true cause is the ‘why’), and that Plato’s causal views should be read through Aristotle’s fourfold schema. I conclude the article by surveying the history of sunaitia after Plato’s usage. (shrink)

The relationship between mind and necessity is one of the major points of difficulty for the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. At times Timaeus seems to say the demiurge is omnipotent in his creation, and at other times seems to say he is limited by pre-existing matter. Most interpretations take one of the two sides, but this paper proposes a novel approach to interpreting this issue which resolves the difficulty. This paper suggests that in his speech Timaeus presents two hypothetical models (...) of creation, one with an omnipotent demiurge and one where he is limited by matter, so as to investigate their theoretical and empirical validity. Further, he shows that each model is ultimately an inadequate explanation of the first principles of the cosmos. Timaeus’ speech is therefore properly understood to be aporetic: it leaves its listeners aware of the difficulties inherent in the two models of creation, but without a more viable alternative. (shrink)

I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the (...) body’s influences. In the second section, I argue that every psychic disorder is a disruption of the motions of the inner psychic circles by the body; moreover, I defend my translation of 86b. In the final section, I argue that the goal of education is to restore the circles to their original orbits, and I disarm a possible objection that bad education is also a cause of psychic disorder. (shrink)

This paper concerns Plato’s characterization of the body as the soul’s tool. I take perception as an example of the body’s usefulness. I explore the Timaeus’ view that perception provides us with models of orderliness. Then, I argue that perception of confusing sensible objects is necessary for our cognitive development too. Lastly, I consider the instrumentality relationship more generally and its place in Plato’s teleological worldview.

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally. A novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that denies the entailment that the soul is corporeal. I conclude by examining Aristotle’s objection to the Timaeus’ psychology and then the intellectual history of this reading of Plato.

This article concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...) the gods have to ensure that virtue is victorious over vice throughout the whole cosmos. (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus reveals a cosmos governed by Necessity and Intellect; commentators have debated the relationship between them. Non-literalists hold that the demiurge, having carte blanche in taming Necessity, is omnipotent. But this omnipotence, alongside the attributes of benevolence and omniscience, creates problems when non-literalists address the problem of evil. We take the demiurge rather as limited by Necessity. This position is supported by episodes within the text, and by its larger consonance with Plato’s philosophy of evil and responsibility. By recognizing (...) the analogy between man and demiurge, the literal reading provides a moral component that its non-literal counterpart lacks. (shrink)

The form of the Good in Plato’s Phaedo and Republic seems, by our standards, to do too much: it is presented as the metaphysical princi­ple, the epistemological principle and the principle of ethics. Yet this seemingly chimerical object makes good sense in the broader context of Plato’s philosophical project. He sought certain knowledge of neces­sary truths (in sharp contrast to the contingent truth of modern science). Thus, to be knowable the cosmos must be informed by timeless princi­ples; and this leads (...) to teleology and the Good. The form of the Good, it is argued, is what makes the world knowable insofar as it is knowable. This interpretation plugs a significant gap in the scholarship on the Good and draws attention to a deep connection between Plato’s episte­mology and his teleological understanding of the cosmos. (shrink)

It is a notion commonly acknowledged that in his work Timaeus the Athenian philosopher Plato (_c_. 429–347 BC) laid down an early chemical theory of the creation, structure and phenomena of the universe. There is much truth in this acknowledgement because Plato’s “chemistry” gives a description of the material world in mathematical terms, an approach that marks an outstanding advancement over cosmologic doctrines put forward by his predecessors, and which was very influential on western culture for many centuries. In the (...) present article, I discuss inter-transformations among Plato’s four types (fire, air, water, and earth) as well as the interpretation they received in the literature. I find that scientists and scholars generally emphasized (and often misunderstood) mathematical aspects of these “reactions” over the philosophical ones. I argue that Plato’s “chemistry” in fact bears on crucial topics of his philosophical system, such as Forms, Becoming, causation and teleology. I propose that consideration of these doctrines help to understand not only the sense of his “chemical” reactions, but also the reason why their stoichiometry is by surface balance and is restricted only to types that come to be and pass away but not to those that provoke the inter-transformations. (shrink)

Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, (...) as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency. (shrink)

I defend, against its more recent critics, a literal, factual, and consistent interpretation of Timaeus’ creation of the cosmos and time. My main purpose is to clarify the assumptions under which a literal interpretation of Timaeus’ cosmology becomes philosophically attractive. I propose five exegetical principles that guide my interpretation. Unlike previous literalists, I argue that assuming a “pre-cosmic time” is a mistake. Instead, I challenge the exegetical assumptions scholars impose on the text and argue that for Timaeus, a mere succession (...) of events and the relations derived from it (before, after, simultaneous with) imply no time, given the narrow definition of the term used in the dialogue. For Timaeus, I explain, time is measurable, regular, and dependent on the motion of the celestial bodies. A mere succession of events like the one needed to understand the creation story and the pre-cosmos requires none of these elements. Readers of Plato erroneously assume that a succession of events implies time, but that is to impose a conception of time absent in the text. The chapter offers a detailed reconstruction of the pre-cosmic stage under a literalist interpretation and argues how it is compatible with the immutable relationship between the Demiurge and the cosmos. -/- This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. chapter 4. (shrink)

This paper examines the possible sources of the theories introduced in Phaedo 99b2-c6. It argues that Plato is primarily alluding to Aristophanes’ Clouds and views held by Diogenes of Apollonia and Archelaus of Athens. But the passage, I also suggest, could serve another rhetorical function. By inviting us to reflect on whether and to what extent other natural philosophers fit the description of these theories, the text emphasises the gulf between Socrates and his predecessors. The paper concludes by discussing the (...) implications of identifying these references for our understanding of the autobiographical passage in the Phaedo. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...) (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, plants are granted soul, and specifically the sort of soul capable of perception and desire. But perception, according to the Timaeus, requires the involvement of to phronimon. It seems to follow that plants must be intelligent. I argue that we can neither avoid granting plants sensation in just this sense, nor can we suppose that the phronimon is something devoid of intelligence. Indeed, plants must be related to intelligence, if they are to be both orderly and good (...) – for intelligence is the cause of normativity and teleology. And yet, plants are not intelligent creatures. While plants must have individual souls if they are to be distinct from each other, each having its own orderly life, the intelligence they require for their individual sensations is not similarly individuated, but is rather that of the cosmos itself. Plants’ peculiar partial individuation arises from the fact that their ultimate good is only derivative: unlike animals, it is only by completing the body of the cosmos that a plant’s good a Good Thing. (shrink)

According to a straightforward reading of Enn. 6.2.21, all principles (logoi) in nature have their origin in corresponding features of a divine Intellect. But interpreters have often advocated more restricted readings of Intellect’s contents. Restricted readings are based in part on other textual evidence, and in part on the grounds that a more expansive reading would seem to require Intellect to think objects of trivial value (‘the value problem’) or whose purposes depend upon facts about sensible reality to which it (...) has no access (‘the teleology problem’). This paper argues that restricted readings are not well founded, and that Plotinus is committed to a more expansive conception of Intellect’s contents by his understanding of Plato’s paradeigmatism. (shrink)

A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of an end or a purpose. So saying that ‘X came about for the sake of Y’ is a teleological account of X. It is a striking feature of ancient Greek philosophy that many thinkers accepted that the world should be explained in this way. However, before Aristotle, teleological explanations of the cosmos were generally based on the idea that it had been created by a divine intelligence. If an intelligent power made (...) the world, then it makes sense that it did so with a purpose in mind, so grasping this purpose will help us understand the world. This is the pattern of teleological explanation that we find in the Presocratics and in Plato. However, with Aristotle teleology underwent a change: instead of thinking that the ends were explanatory because a mind had sought to bring them about, Aristotle took the ends to operate in natural beings independently of the efforts of any creative intelligence. Indeed, he thought that his predecessors had failed to understand what was distinctive of nature, namely, that its ends work from the inside of natural beings themselves. (shrink)

In De usu partium, Galen argues that the parts of the human body are designed to fulfill functions that contribute to the continued existence and well-being of the organism as a whole. Synthesizing Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on teleology, Galen highlights the importance of a functional framework for anatomical research. For Galen, teleology is as much a method for anatomical inquiry as it is a metaphysical commitment. In particular, teleology guides the main tool of anatomical investigation: dissection. According to Galen, (...) the success of medical research and practice requires classifying, individuating, and explaining anatomical parts in light of their functional contributions. (shrink)

This volume explores the intuitive yet puzzling concept of teleology as it has been treated by philosophers from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present day. Philosophical discussions are enlivened and contextualized by reflections on the implications of teleology in medicine, art, poetry, and music.

According to Husserl, Plato played a fundamental role in the development of the notion of teleology, so much so that Husserl viewed the myth narrated in the Timaeus as a fundamental stage in the long history that he hoped would eventually lead to a teleological science of the world grounded in transcendental phenomenology. This article explores this interpretation of Plato’s legacy in light of Husserl’s thesis that Plato was the initiator of the ideal of genuine science. It also outlines how (...) Husserl sought conceptual resources within transcendental phenomenology to turn the key elements of Plato’s creation myth into rigorous scientific ideas. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new reading of Phaedo 99b6-d2. My main thesis is that in 99c6-9, Socrates does not refer to the teleological αἰτία but to the αἰτία that will be provided by a stronger ‘Atlas’ (99c4-5). This means that the passage offers no evidence that Socrates abandons teleology or modifies his views about it. He acknowledges, instead, that he could not find or learn any αἰτία stronger than the teleological one. This, I suggest, allows an interpretation of (...) the Phaedo in which Socrates offers a consistent account of the αἰτία of generation and destruction. (shrink)

“Teleology,” a word invented in 1728 by Christian Wolff, has become a magic formula among those who are interested in Plato, Aristotle, and even the Stoics. Among our contemporaries, “teleology” in fact enables modern physical theories based on mechanical necessity to be opposed to ancient explanations that try to master chance by means of a good and benevolent intellect. The question in this paper will be to determine whether this explanation, which refers above all to Aristotle’s doctrine of causes and (...) more precisely to the final cause, can be found in Plato’s Timaeus. (shrink)

Chez les interprètes récents du Timée de Platon, le terme « téléologie », inventé au xviiie siècle, a pris une place déterminante. Mais l’usage de ce terme trahit une interprétation aristotélicienne de la figure du démiurge qu’il s’agit d’assimiler au premier moteur, dans le contexte de la cause finale. On s’interrogera ici sur l’origine de ce terme, et sur la pertinence de son usage pour comprendre le rôle que joue le démiurge dans le Timée.

Payne's commentary on Republic I–VII is not advanced as a sustained argument for the new type of teleology he finds there but is structured by themes in the text. It engages with selected previous scholarship on the Republic and is written with care and deliberation. Payne begins with an overview of the types of teleology, or end-directed action, found in Plato's corpus, but does not address contemporary philosophy of action. Payne's own "functional teleology of action" accounts for how agents act (...) for the sake of ends of which they are unaware, as when mathematical study is directed to the Form of the Good... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, we build upon M.M. McCabe's [2021] characterisation of two accounts of logos and Socratic endeavour in Plato's Euthydemus. We argue that the brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, are engaged in and committed to an endeavour which has features in common with Socrates’. It has an aim, rules, and is subject to failure. It is also a unified activity in which structure, process and continuity are important. However, the brothers’ only aim is impressing their audience and they seem (...) to have no interest in knowledge, truth or the kind of moral development that Socrates values. They are also committed to very few of Socrates’ rules for conversation. Our analysis of the brothers’ project shows us that Plato presents us with an interesting problem: how we should respond to people who engage in conversation with us but with an aim that seems trivial and without the rules that we think are crucial for intellectual and moral development. (shrink)

In the Phaedo Socrates tells his intellectual biography. He states that in the beginning of his intellectual career he occupied himself with the same causes that the ones of the Pre-Socratics. But this explanation was the root of all sort of philosophical problems so he abandoned it. After this disappointment, Socrates discovered the book of Anaxagoras and he expected there to find that the nous is causa finalis of everything because it is the good. But Anaxagoras never really developed this (...) thought so Socrates pursued a different path: the method of hypothesis and the theory of ideas. Is there any trace of the good in the Phaedo? The standard interpretation of the intellectual biography and the deuteros plous passage, where Socrates says he was deprived of it, maintains that there isn’t. Contrary to the standard reading of the text we affirm that the critique that the old Socrates makes against the Pre-Socratics for not taking into consideration the teleological aspect of causality could also be read as an outline of the causal role of the good. This reading allows us to think of a Socrates who is still searching for the good in the deuteros plous account. (shrink)

As is generally perceived, one of the leading themes in Plato’s Republic is psycho-paideia, education and enculturation of human soul or psyche from a moralistic standpoint. Interestingly, the overall structure of the dialogue as a whole is philosophically framed to address the problem with the soul through a chain of myths or allegories. It commences with the myth of the magic ring of Gyges that is deployed to expose the vulnerable nature of the human soul in the choice between the (...) just and unjust deeds; later on it intermediates with the allegorical tripartition of the soul through the three prominent images of a man, a lion and a many-headed monster, employed to illustrate the complex traits of the soul itself and its possible likes and consequences; and finally, it ends up with the great myth of Er, especially designed to illuminate the postmortem experience of the wandering soul that witnessed how the divinely authorized reward-and-punishment principle is applied to the other afterlife souls, categorized into two broad types known as the just and the unjust. This experience is associated with transmigration in the mystic overtone of the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition. The myth of Er at the end of Plato’s Republic is usually conceived as an eschatological one, set in a philosophical context. It, thus, reveals the relationship between philomythos and phylosophos, and the interaction between myth and philosophy in a creative manner. Engaging and thought-provocating as it is, it is deployed to stir much reflection on the possible aspects of the human soul in terms of justice and injustice. In addition, it well demonstrates how Plato applies it as one of many typical cases to his philosophical discourse and speculative formulation with dramatic effect, mystical import and aesthetic pleasure. Teleologically, the story itself could be treated as a psycho-paideia mythos in principle. It is intended to help cultivate and save the soul through such three ways as the heavenly, the underground, and the philosophical. All this is assumed to feature a kind of poetic wisdom characteristic of Plato’s poetic philosophy as is exemplified in his dialogues. This poetic wisdom lies in such realms as philosophical rewriting of myths, organic contextuality, divine law in a moralized cosmos, symbolic expression of the oneness between absolute necessity and destiny, imaginative participation via mythical experience, and even bricolage intellectue working at cross-levels. (shrink)

This book explores a variety of teleology present in Plato's Republic, in which actions are carried out for the sake of an end that is not the intended goal. Payne draws on examples from Republic to demonstrate that performing some actions can help produce unintended results, which qualify as ends or purposes of human action.

The purpose of this book is to restore the balance by looking at the manifold ways in which teleology in antiquity was viewed. The purpose of the article is to examine a long passage in Plato's Cratylus that postulates the purposeful design of names in a purposeful universe, comparing in particular the Derveni papyrus.

Plato’s demiurge makes a series of questionable decisions in creating the world. Most notoriously, he endeavors to replicate, to the extent possible, some of the features that his model possesses just insofar as it is a Form. This has provoked the colorful complaint that the demiurge is as raving mad as a general contractor who constructs a house of vellum to better realize the architect’s vellum plans (Keyt 1971). The present paper considers the sanity of the demiurge’s reasoning in light (...) of Timaeus 32c5-33b1, where he invokes considerations of wholeness, completeness, uniqueness, and eternality in deciding to build the body of the world from all of each of the simple bodies. Since the passage makes no appeal to the demiurge’s intelligible model, one can mine it for indications of the value that the demiurge takes those features to have independent of mimetic goals. I argue that, for Plato, those features are intrinsically good-making and, thus, that it is not only appropriate for them to characterize Forms qua Forms but also that it is appropriate for the demiurge to aim at replicating them, to the extent possible, in his creation. In particular, I argue that the demiurge’s success in instilling a circumscribed version of each feature in his creation helps to qualify it as a genuine being despite the fact that it comes to be. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between justice and nature in key figures in early Greek philosophy in order to understand the idea of nature that grounds Plato’s account of justice. Tracing the idea of justice through Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, I show that each figure uses justice in unique and innovative ways to explain different concepts of nature. Among the Presocratics then, justice is a heuristic for grasping the newly emerging and evolving concept of nature. It is in turn this (...) evolving concept of nature that ushers in the transformation of justice from the conventional Hesiodic notion of “legal settlement” or “paying one’s debts” to Plato’s philosophical account of justice based on nature. The transformation is marked by the development of several key epistemological criteria and teleological facets in the earliest concepts of nature. As such, Plato’s account of justice in the Republic is deeply indebted to Presocratic conceptions of justice and nature. (shrink)

Many assume that Plato's Form of the Good is a final cause. This might be true if one assumes an Aristotelian definition of final cause; however, I argue that if one adopts Plato's conception of final causation as evidenced in the Phaedo and Timaeus, the claim that the Form of the Good is a final cause for Plato is untenable.

In this paper, I examine three significant periods of the cosmological argument which exemplify the importance of contestation: first, Plato’s and Aristotle’s formulation of it, second, Philoponus’ own reactions and influence, third, the contemporary state of such discourses. Contestation has an inestimable role in philosophical development and reflection, as will be demonstrated through the examination of such periods.

Can Plato’s ethical theory account for the goodness of actions? Plato’s Form of the Good is regarded as the ultimate explanatory principle of all good things, which presumably includes good actions. And this is indeed a standard view. However, in this paper I argue that the theory of the Form of the Good cannot explain the goodness of actions. This is a highly contested claim because, if it is accurate, it suggests that there is a significant deficit in Plato’s theory (...) of the Form of the Good - the transcendent principle of all goodness. The success of this thesis may seem to be bad news for Plato, for if the transcendent principle of all goodness fails to account for the goodness of actions, something seems to be awry in Plato’s ethical theory. However, not all is lost. In the second part of this paper, I argue that Plato’s ethical theory is nonetheless viable, because Plato has another, distinct type of explanation that does the explanatory work that the Form of the Good cannot do. This is what I call the Platonic Teleological Explanation, Plato’s own version of a teleological explanation. The Platonic Teleological Explanation is not reducible to an explanation in terms of the Form of the Good; it is an independent and non-dispensable type of explanation. Ultimately, I shall argue that only the Platonic Teleological Explanation can account for the goodness of actions. (shrink)

In his opening speech, Timaeus argues that the cosmos must be the product of a craftsman looking to an eternal paradigm. Yet his premises seem at best to justify only that the world could have been made by such a craftsman. This paper seeks to clarify Timaeus’ justification for his stronger conclusion. It is argued that Timaeus sees a necessary role for craftsmanship as a cause that makes becoming like being.

Unitarianism was the norm amongst ancient interpreters of Plato. One strategy they used to maintain the unity of his thinking was to argue that different works were saying the same things but in different modes. So, for example, the Republic was saying ethically what the Timaeus was saying in the manner of natural philosophy. In this paper, I want to offer an interpretation of the Cave image in Republic 7 which lends support to this division of labour, and so indirectly, (...) at least, to a unitarian understanding of Plato’s thinking across these two works. (shrink)

Many biologists have accepted Ernst Mayr’s claim that evolutionary biology undermined an essentialist or typological view of species that had its roots in Platonic philosophy. However, Mayr has been accused of failing to support with textual evidence his attributions to Plato of these sorts of views about biology. Contemporary work in history and philosophy of biology often seems to take onboard Mayr’s account of Plato’s view of species. This paper seeks to provide a critical account of putative inconsistencies between an (...) evolutionary view of species and Platonic philosophy with renewed attention to the Platonic texts in light of recent Plato scholarship; I argue that claims that Plato held an essentialist view of species inconsistent with evolutionary biology are inadequately supported by textual evidence. If Mayr’s essentialist thesis fails, one might think that the intuition that Platonic philosophy is in tension with Darwinian evolution could nonetheless be accounted for by Plato’s apparent privileging of a certain sort of teleological explanation, a thesis that Mayr suggests in his 1959 paper on Louis Agassiz. However, this thesis also faces difficulties. Ernst Mayr’s Plato is more likely to be found in the writings of anti-evolutionary 19th century biologists like Mayr’s frequent target, Agassiz, than in a cautious reading of the Platonic dialogues themselves. Interlocutors in discussions of the history of biological thought and classificatory methods in biology should be cautious in ascribing views about biology to Plato and using terms like “Platonic essentialism.”. (shrink)

This study investigates the idea of harmony as a protological and eschatological principle in three outstanding Patristic philosophers, well steeped in the Platonic tradition: Origen, Gregory Nyssen, and Evagrius. All of them attached an extraordinary importance to harmony, homonoia, and unity in the arkhē and, even more, in the telos. This ideal is opposed to the disagreement/dispersion of rational creatures’ acts of volition after their fall and before the eventual apokatastasis. These Christian Platonists are among the strongest supporters of the (...) final universal restoration. Their reflection on the unity-multiplicity dialectic, which parallels that between harmony and disorder/discord/dissonance, is informed by the Platonic tradition. In Gregory, the idea of harmony assumes musical connotations, especially in relation to the telos. In this connection, I examine the relationship between their notion of harmony in the arkhē and telos and Plotinus’ concept of harmony. Plotinus was well known to Gregory, the author of a Christianized version of Plato’s Phaedo in which apokatastasis is prominent. Origen, whose readings included many Middle-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean texts, in Alexandria attended the classes of the “proto-Neoplatonist” Ammonius, who was also Plotinus’ teacher. A wide-ranging methodical investigation of the relation between Origen’s and Plotinus’ philosophical thoughts is still a notable desideratum. Finally, I concentrate on the concept of harmony in astronomy as a metaphor for intellectual harmony and apokatastasis in Patristic Platonism, especially in Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnōstika. The noun apokatastasis was used in an astronomical sense, and employed in Stoicism for the conclusion of a cosmic cycle. Evagrius, who loved astronomical metaphors, focussed a kephalaion on a wordplay—which escaped Guillaumont and all other scholars—concerning the astronomical meaning of apokatastasis, thus embedding his theory of the eventual restoration in an allegorical framework that rests on a notion of astronomical harmony. A strong case is made in this connection that Evagrius was elaborating on Plato’s pivotal link between cosmological and intellectual harmony, and was aware that the Stoic theory of cosmological apokatastasis drew on Plato. (shrink)

In Republic V, Plato distinguishes two different cognitive powers, knowledge and belief, which operate differently on different types of object. I argue that in Republic VI Plato modifies this account, and claims that there is a single cognitive power, which under different circumstances behaves either as knowledge or as belief. I show that the circumstances which turn true belief into knowledge are the provision of an individuation account of the object of belief, which reveals the ontological status and the nature (...) of the object. Plato explores many alternative candidates of individuation accounts of objects of true belief, which he discards. I conclude with a Platonic sketch of a teleological account of individuation which would satisfy his requirements of turning true belief into knowledge. (shrink)

One aim of this paper is to bring to the surface the problems with the traditional, non-literal interpretation of the pre-cosmos in the Timaeus. Contrary to this traditional interpretation, I show that Necessity is an ateleological cause capable of bringing about the events in the pre-cosmos, and that Intelligence is a teleological cause that produces effects only for the sake of maximizing the good. I conclude that there are no grounds for supposing that Intelligence is a causal force operating in (...) the pre-cosmos, and that the account of the pre-cosmos should be taken literally: it is an account of the works of Necessity alone. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V.